incubus2012
join:2002-06-20
Searcy, AR | What is the best prepaid option for me?
I don't talk on a phone much. I had a prepaid tracphone but lost it a few months ago. |
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tracfoneforever
@qwest.net | Get another tracfone! I've had them since day one since I don't put in much talk mileage also. No one can beat the coverage and it's all automated now so you don't even have to wait hours for a csr. |
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Phoneman63
join:2001-02-22
Hauppauge, NY
| reply to incubus2012
I would go with the T-mobile To Go Phone. Have it for 2 years now w/o any problems.
»www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/prepaid.aspx
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"Leave the gun, take the cannolis" |
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Boomerang86
Got FUD?
Premium
join:2002-10-18
VampireState
clubs: | reply to incubus2012
There are LOTS of decent prepaid phones out there; if you don't mind not having a flip Wal-Mart has a Tracfone for less than $15.
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Don't pay ME back, pay it forward. |
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incubus2012
join:2002-06-20
Searcy, AR | I guess what I am really concerned with is it cheaper to use prepaid or get a low plan from a carrier. |
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BlitzenZeus
Burnt Out Cynic
Premium,MVM
join:2000-01-13
Beaverton, OR | Well compared your month usage at the prepaid rates you would be paying compared to the monthly plans, which many have free periods. |
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HolmanGT
Premium
join:2001-11-20
Saint George, UT
 ·Baja Broadband
| reply to incubus2012
incubus2012,
I have been looking for something inexpensive for my Mother. So I looked at some of the Pay As You Go packages.
I for life of me don't see why people bother with them. Everything I looked at, if you use your phone once a day would be about the same price as T-Mo's $39 dollar plan but with about a tenth the minutes.
Example: AT&T 10 cents a minute plus a dollar for every day you use it.
Someone need to explain why these plans are a cheap/good thing.
They strike me as plans designed for people without credit, not to save you any money, and OK no contract. But other than that if your not careful you could run up one heck of a bill with one of those things. OK - so you can't run up a bill but you can eat up a $100 dollar pre-pay card in short order. |
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nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·AT&T Midwest
| Everything I looked at, if you use your phone once a day would be about the same price as T-Mo's $39 dollar plan but with about a tenth the minutes. I use my phone, on average, about once or twice a week. And that's mostly for receiving calls that are usually less than 1 minute in length.
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AT&T dsl; Westell 2200 modem/router; SuSE 10.1; firefox 2.0.0.8 |
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slyphoxj
join:2002-06-23
Brook Park, OH
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to HolmanGT
It all depends on how much you want or need to use your cell phone. For those of us who don't use our cell phone very much (say, about 100 minutes/month or less), prepaid is much cheaper. Alltel U Prepaid's and Virgin Mobile's pay-by-the-minute plans are $0.15 and $0.18 a minute, respectively. Neither of these two carriers charge a daily or monthly fee with their pay-by-the-minute plans.
These two prepaids also offer pay-by-the-month plans that I could temporarily switch to if I start using my cell phone more than 200 or so minutes a month for a couple months.
If you can get a useable T-Mobile signal everywhere you will need/want to use your cell, I second Phoneman63's suggestion for T-Mobile To Go. T-Mobile's prepaid is only $0.10/minute if you buy $100 of airtime. And the $100 worth of airtime, and all replenishments afterwards, are good for a year if you buy $100 upfront. |
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timcuth
Braves Fan
Premium
join:2000-09-18
Pelham, AL
clubs:
·AT&T Southeast
|  reply to incubus2012
said by incubus2012  :I guess what I am really concerned with is it cheaper to use prepaid or get a low plan from a carrier. I am pretty sure it will still be much cheaper to stay with prepaid, especially something like TracFone or T-Mobile ToGo where there is no monthly fee / minimum. I personally think T-Mobile would be best, but YMMV.
Tim
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"Love consists in overestimating the difference between one woman and another" - George Bernard Shaw
~ Project Hope ~ |
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burgerwars
join:2004-09-11
Northridge, CA
 ·voip.ms
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to incubus2012
The advantage with t-Mobile To Go, is once you add $100 to your account, every time you add minutes they will not expire for one year. That's even if you just add $10.
So if your plan is to keep this line for emergency use, as a spare phone, or to save a number you ported to it, for just $10 a year (after the initial $100), you can keep the account open as long as you don't gobble up all your remaining minutes. If you do use up all your minutes, I think you have 90 days from that point to add more minutes or you lose your number. |
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Majestik
World Traveler
Premium
join:2001-05-11
Tulsa, OK
clubs:
| reply to HolmanGT
Prepaid is designed for someone like me who don't want to pay for something they rarely use and don't talk on the phone all the time and/or use free services(Skype) which I am using as I type this.
Don't have to be careful because I rarely use my T-mobile prepaid. I have around 600 minutes with 6 months left on my $100 annual.
The only reason I used so much so far is because of work being done on my home last spring and the many calls made to Sprint customer service which has been paid back to me.
Used around 5 minutes in 2 months.
I transferred my home number to prepaid.
And save $188/yr..
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The adventure continues......2007 so far ....Rio de Janeiro,Rome,Acapulco,Switzerland,Santiago,Chile... |
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HolmanGT
Premium
join:2001-11-20
Saint George, UT
·Baja Broadband
| Majestik,
"Used around 5 minutes in 2 months.
I transferred my home number to prepaid.
And save $188/yr.."
Well that is my problem with understanding the advantage of Pre-pay. I can't even get my mind grasp the concept of 2.5 minutes a month phone usage. Nor can I accept all the hassle to charge a phone every night, lug it around for thirty days so that I can make a two minute phone call. All of that effort could be handled by slipping a quarter in your wallet and use a pay phone if and when the need arises. And for emergencies throw an Ole beater and charging cable in the trunk of your car, it doesn't even need a contract to make a 911 call.
If I put my home phone calls on top of my cell phone usage I wouldn't even want to think about how much I would owe AT&T. Besides normal home phone usage the amount of junk phone calls I get on my home phone if transfered to my cell and I had to then had to pay for them... there are no words I can use here that would properly express my anger.
I can just see it now... Trash Call: "Hello I want to be your next Senator and oh by the way you are paying for this call". The only thing that comes to mind is "No way in He11 am I going to put up with that".
I no what your thinking; use the don't call list, there are almost as many work-arounds for that don't call list as there are telephone solicitors (and some things like political garbage is not covered by that anyway).
Hey Mr. Majestik, please don't take any of my rhetoric personal, it is sure not meant to be anything more than a statement of my lack of understanding for people that can limit their vices. My problem is "if a little does a little good..." well you get the point, just my personal and ofttimes expensive credo. 
PS - Just one more comment Majestik, I bet there are a lot of folks out there that are just being taken advantage of by the different carriers because for some reason their credit or current financial status is on the low side (probably thru no fault of their own). I just hate big companies that take advantage of someones bad luck.
Example: those "no credit check" rent to own TV & Furniture places. What they don't mention is you are pay ten times the face value and if you miss a payment ... well can you spell Rumpelstiltskin. |
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nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL | All of that effort could be handled by slipping a quarter in your wallet and use a pay phone if and when the need arises. That assumes that you can find a payphone. They are becoming an endangered species. |
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HolmanGT
Premium
join:2001-11-20
Saint George, UT
·Baja Broadband
| nwrickert,
After I made that statement I had the same thought but left it in hoping no one would notice. Actually I can't remember the last time I saw a pay phone. So you caught me with my pants down on that one.
Actually considering the post by slyphonxj my argument doesn't hold much water anymore. I made the mistake of assuming that if AT&T tacked on that dollar a day thing they all did something like that. Frankly what AT&T does unless I am missing something again puts them right out of the ballpark competitively speaking.
The Virgin Mobile Pre pay he mentioned actually sounds like just the ticket for some one like my elderly mother. |
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nwrickert
sand groper
Premium,MVM
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T Midwest
| Frankly what AT&T does unless I am missing something again puts them right out of the ballpark competitively speaking. Perhaps they don't really want to do prepaid. Some of the low cost prepaid services are actually reselling AT&T wireless network, and maybe AT&T is happy with handling prepaid through the resellers. |
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HolmanGT
Premium
join:2001-11-20
Saint George, UT
·Baja Broadband
| nwrickert,
Again, you have brought up an issue with AT&T that I did not consider.
If they are the network behind the scenes for some of the pre-pay only groups and contract tower time to them, it wouldn't make good sense for them to undercut their cash cows, maybe even spelled out in a contract with them.
nwrickert, "Uncle" - I can't take much more of your technical beatings. I obviously had my head in a very dark place.  |
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Frank
is chilling
Premium
join:2000-11-03
somewhere
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to HolmanGT
said by HolmanGT :Majestik, "Used around 5 minutes in 2 months. I transferred my home number to prepaid. And save $188/yr.." Well that is my problem with understanding the advantage of Pre-pay. I can't even get my mind grasp the concept of 2.5 minutes a month phone usage. Nor can I accept all the hassle to charge a phone every night, lug it around for thirty days so that I can make a two minute phone call. All of that effort could be handled by slipping a quarter in your wallet and use a pay phone if and when the need arises. And for emergencies throw an Ole beater and charging cable in the trunk of your car, it doesn't even need a contract to make a 911 call. If I put my home phone calls on top of my cell phone usage I wouldn't even want to think about how much I would owe AT&T. Besides normal home phone usage the amount of junk phone calls I get on my home phone if transfered to my cell and I had to then had to pay for them... there are no words I can use here that would properly express my anger. I can just see it now... Trash Call: "Hello I want to be your next Senator and oh by the way you are paying for this call". The only thing that comes to mind is "No way in He11 am I going to put up with that". I no what your thinking; use the don't call list, there are almost as many work-arounds for that don't call list as there are telephone solicitors (and some things like political garbage is not covered by that anyway). Hey Mr. Majestik, please don't take any of my rhetoric personal, it is sure not meant to be anything more than a statement of my lack of understanding for people that can limit their vices. My problem is "if a little does a little good..." well you get the point, just my personal and ofttimes expensive credo. PS - Just one more comment Majestik, I bet there are a lot of folks out there that are just being taken advantage of by the different carriers because for some reason their credit or current financial status is on the low side (probably thru no fault of their own). I just hate big companies that take advantage of someones bad luck. Example: those "no credit check" rent to own TV & Furniture places. What they don't mention is you are pay ten times the face value and if you miss a payment ... well can you spell Rumpelstiltskin. i dont know about you, but I can think of a pretty good reason to have a cellphone and that is the peace of mind you have that if your car breaks down you wont get stranded. Last winter my car broke down on the way home and my only way to get home and get my car towed was to use my cellphone. Had I not had a cellphone I would have had to walk over 5 miles in the freezing snow to the nearest shopping area in order to find a payphone. This was on a rural road in the middle of the night with absolutely no cars in sight.
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At first I thought everyone on the highway was drunk but then I realized I was driving in Florida  |
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HolmanGT
Premium
join:2001-11-20
Saint George, UT
·Baja Broadband
| Frank,
I am really starting to regret any opinion that I have voiced here in this thread.
As far as a phone while traveling I completely understand. I have traveled in some pretty hostile environments myself where having a cell phone goes beyond a convenience and enters into the realm of a survival tool.
Goodness do I hate eating crow, and I know I am going to set my self up for another helping but my attitude about a pay as you go phones is the impressions I have developed about the people that post asking about Pre-pays. I mostly hear them looking for a better deal or a way of not getting hooked into a contract (and I am not faulting anyone for trying to find a better deal) and for those folks I still think they will end up spending more in the long run with a pre-pay. However if you are like some of the others in this thread that really are only going to use 5 or 10 minutes a week or someone like your self that carries one in the car for safety reasons and really does not put any minutes to speak of on it then it is probably the best thing since sliced bread. |
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